


shatterglass heart

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Changeling: The Lost, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: There is nothing human left in Vader.Then he sees them again, and—perhaps—a shred remains.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Exchanges After Dark Birthday Bash 2021





	shatterglass heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacewitchescantdie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacewitchescantdie/gifts).



> hey this only took me what two years to figure out anything resembling a framing for?
> 
> (excessive stylization means I don't need to figure out exactly how any of this works except that obviously the Emperor is a True Fae)

Coruscant is an Arcadian city made of plastic and glass that spills through the Hedge and into the mortal world, the borders fluid and unnoticeable to those whose eyes cannot see illusion. Vader strides through such flimsy barriers, uncaring about what minor beasts might coil around his feet; the Emperor has built him into part of the city itself, and none can challenge his power now.

(Once, he thought to challenge the Emperor, but the only things he remembers about that are sand and fire: His glass heart was forged from it, and the component pieces forever lost.)

He is being sent, today, to destroy evidence of one of the Emperor’s Names. Vader doesn’t pity the loyalist whose protections were insufficient; if he is already dead, that is kind enough, and even the pathetic rebels know that.

Vader calls his ship, made of dreams and memories and carefully maintained through all these years of tinkering, and flies through the vast cold darkness of space. The Emperor cannot do this, and it hurts even Vader to be so far from the fear he feeds upon, but he has been ordered, and he cannot refuse. It is why his ship is so quick, his hands so deft; the pain is uncompromising, and he prefers to race through it to find his prey.

He catches the rebels, who think themselves safe because they gild their ships with steel and work iron into their armor. They are not safe, not when his skin is covered with layers of tempered glass and only the cloth it's affixed to is token-forged and dreamworked. His sword is sharp, and fire does not care what it burns so long as it is hot enough. They die screaming, and Vader eats their fear and throws it back at them to urge their terror to yet higher peaks.

There is only one person who does not tremble before him.

Vader knows her. _Princess_ , she is sometimes called. _Senator_ , other times. The truest name she gives is _Organa_ , but a family name is too dispersed; he cannot compel her with it. She stares unblinkingly at him, anger fueling her every action, and Vader lets out a static-harsh sigh. The Emperor will be displeased with her, but she has status enough—and protections, woven by her family so thickly he can barely understand where one binding ends and a new one begins—that he cannot kill her outright.

He takes her back, walking through the Hedge without a second thought. His subordinates can continue searching for the lost Name; she has hidden it in gold wires and steel circuits, and Vader cannot see those as clearly as those who still understand mortality.

The Emperor does not look at Princess Organa.

The Emperor orders her tortured.

The Emperor orders her family killed.

Vader obeys both orders without a thought.

(She is changing already from being in the place of the Emperor’s power; her edges are growing sharper, the light within her intensifying. Vader watches, and does not warn her of what is coming. She will know, soon enough.)

His careful planning of Princess Organa’s transformation is shattered by the man who swore to teach and protect him and then _broke_ that pledge and somehow spun it so that Vader caught the backlash instead.

Vader almost doesn’t notice the boy.

It’s only when Kenobi seals a pact with his own death that the lines of power stabilise and draw Vader’s gaze from the krayt dragon to the newly-expanding nebula (and the star that was about to be born, hiding in a ship that shouldn’t have been able to come here).

Vader looks at the boy, and sees sand and fire, and remembers:

Before he had been taken, his children were about to be born.

(He lets them live, and stores this memory in his collar so the Emperor cannot see it, and waits. He has seen them once, now; Fate will not let them be parted for so long again.)


End file.
